"AUSTIN, Texas- The Texas Department of Public Safety said it will no longer train police officers with a boxing drill that resulted in a recruit's death last year.

The department suspended full-contact fighting after Jimmy Ray Carty Jr. died of head injuries last May. He was knocked to the ground at least twice by blows to the head.

"We are confident we will find ways to train them that will keep them safe and keep the people of the state of Texas safe," department spokeswoman Tela Mange said Wednesday.

The agency used the drill for at least 30 years and had argued it was useful training for officers who must be prepared to fight on the streets.

But consultants hired by the department after Carty's death recommended the drill be eliminated because it caused too many head injuries and did not involve realistic situations.

The department also banned all other exercises that involve hitting or other hard contact between trainees."

Given that many police officers face physical conflict every day, I'm not sure that removing all "live" training is a good idea. Many aspects of combat cannot be imparted without resistance. I mean, should CPR be not taught if someone gets injured? Accidents are bound to happen.

With all due respect to the dead cadet. Not trying to minimize the heartache of the family involved.

_________________________"In case you ever wondered what it's like to be knocked out, it's like waking up from a nightmare only to discover it wasn't a dream." -Forrest Griffin

What a joke. Maybe we should ban cars as people die in wrecks every day everywhere. Or flying. Or anything. Or water as you could drown. What a bunch of BS.

_________________________
Member of DaJoGen MMA school under Dave Hagen and Team Chaos fight team under Denver Mangiyatan and Chris Toquero, ran out of Zanshin Martial Arts in Salem Oregon: http://www.zanshinarts.org/Home.aspx,

"AUSTIN, Texas- The Texas Department of Public Safety said it will no longer train police officers with a boxing drill that resulted in a recruit's death last year.

The department suspended full-contact fighting after Jimmy Ray Carty Jr. died of head injuries last May. He was knocked to the ground at least twice by blows to the head.

"We are confident we will find ways to train them that will keep them safe and keep the people of the state of Texas safe," department spokeswoman Tela Mange said Wednesday.

The agency used the drill for at least 30 years and had argued it was useful training for officers who must be prepared to fight on the streets.

But consultants hired by the department after Carty's death recommended the drill be eliminated because it caused too many head injuries and did not involve realistic situations.

The department also banned all other exercises that involve hitting or other hard contact between trainees."

Given that many police officers face physical conflict every day, I'm not sure that removing all "live" training is a good idea. Many aspects of combat cannot be imparted without resistance. I mean, should CPR be not taught if someone gets injured? Accidents are bound to happen.

With all due respect to the dead cadet. Not trying to minimize the heartache of the family involved.

What would CPR do for a severe head injury like an intracranial bleed? Absolutely nothing.

Why do policeman or statetroopers need to know how to box with gloves on? That kind of training is for sport and the ring not for the streets or law enforcement.

Why would a policeman or trooper need to stand toe-to-toe with a bad guy and duke it out? That is a very rare thing indeed.

How many bad guys will be wearing gloves and willing to stand there and box? Not too many.

Now training in grappling arts like Judo or BJJ/GJJ would make sense. In fact when I coordinated and hosted a Caique Jiu-Jitsu seminar at UTSA in the early part of the millenia I went to the University police and our Health Science Center to ask them if they'd like to participate. I explained the salience of groundwork and grappling in apprehending ciminals. They laughed and said "we got guns, pepper spray, batons and back-up". They were, are and will be obliviously stupid. So I guess cops feel that boxing is more salient for arresting people.

The thing with blunt head trauma with padded gloves is that it spreads the force over a larger area unlike head punches or face punches without any or minimal padding. This leads to multiple concussions where the brain slams against the skull. Each time you have a concussion or contussion (bruise) to the brain you have a chance of severe irreversible brain damage and/or death. The brain cell loss is a sure thing.

Boxing is the most brutal of all sports. It is designed to destroy that which makes us human, our brain. There is a reason that certain folks, usually underprivileged people, fight in the ring. You don't see Don King trying to box or Dana White in the Octagon for a reason. They leave it up to the human pit bulls who are willing to kill themselves for some money and limited fame but really to make other non-boxers/fighters very, very rich.

Boxing and police work are not conducive especially long-term. This idea gives new meaning to "fighting for fighting's sake". Cops need their brains. Most are barely above average intelligence as it is . They need to be healthy to apprehend criminals. What good is being dead or injured and trying to be a policeman?

They should learn how to fight without gloves anyway. Boxing is for kids and athletes, not for soldiers and the police. They should be learning how to punch without padding. They should only allow controlled cony=tact on humans, but emphasize a lot of bag work and other supplemental drills to get them acclimated to punching with some force and velocity.

You can't hit the head continuously and expect something like Parkinsonian Syndrome, dementia or that death NOT to happen. It just shows how ignorant folks are of science and medicine.

Peace to the cat who died and much respect to the family. God bless them. IMO they should sue fo' sheez'...

You make some good points, and I do not disagree with you about officers duking it out with perps. But when you say:

Quote:Why do policeman or statetroopers need to know how to box with gloves on? That kind of training is for sport and the ring not for the streets or law enforcement.

I disagree. Sport is just an aspect of training. The idea is to get the officers used to hitting and being hit with energy and resistance. This is a daily occurance for some officers on the street (one of my best friends and his wife are police officers).

In the same way that you would recommend BJJ for officer training (despite probably hearing "but you don't want officers rolling around in the broken glass", etc ), that is not the point to have them groundfighting just for the sake of sport. They are learning timing, energy and movement by boxing and BJJ, etc.

Certainly some better control should be excercised - and probably some better medical attention as well - but this seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Will they stop firearms training if someone gets hurt or dies on the range? Again, no disrespect to the fallen cadet.

_________________________"In case you ever wondered what it's like to be knocked out, it's like waking up from a nightmare only to discover it wasn't a dream." -Forrest Griffin

I disagree. Sport is just an aspect of training. The idea is to get the officers used to hitting and being hit with energy and resistance.

Excellent point Matt. I would have said that contact training is an invaluable part of ANYONE'S martial art training and if you're NOT doing some form of it, you're only fooling yourselves if you think you're learning to defend yourself.

That said, how ELSE are you going to do any contact training than by wearing gloves? The fact that this is just amazingly simple common sense that is completely missed by some, is mind boggling. I cannot begin to imagine the mind of a person who doesn't understand this.

Sport has ZERO to do with anything here.

Quote:

Certainly some better control should be exercised - and probably some better medical attention as well - but this seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

You nailed it. There is no telling how good the supervision was where they were training. There is no telling how good the coach was at doing his job. The coaching could have been superb and it was just a freak accident.

I believe they have this training, as believe it or not, many police recruits have never been in a fight or have gotten punched in the face. It is more like awareness, much like tear gas & pepper spray exposure. There have been other examples of this as well. Years back, the Mass Troopers had a similiar unfortunate occurance as well.

Defensive tactics are also taught to cover the agency for liability purposes as well. So it is a catch 22.

I also would not be surprised if there may have been some hazing or intimidation involved, to persuade someone to drop out, that the staff did not think would make a good officier.

The question is of comparing "LIABILITY" with "PROBABILITY". The risk of injury in training is seen as an avoidable one just by eliminating the risky training. Risk on the street is unknown until something happens and it is deemed unavoidable. Some administrators would rather gamble that the probability that something bad will happen on the street is pretty slim in that respect.

Percentage-wise, they are "probably" correct. Training (especially H2H) represents a miniscule portion of the total working career of LEOs. If in that extremely small amount of time, they are experiencing any serious injuries/deaths, it is likely that the program will be trashed. This is because 99.9999% of the rest of the working career, most cops don't get seriously hurt on the job. This is just numbers but numbers make administrators sit up and listen.

I think contact training should be mandated for cops although I don't necessarily think boxing is the way to go about it. It likely got started because one of their head trainers was into boxing. He could fight as a boxer and their administration sought to impart some of those attributes to their recruits.